Gwynn Compton works for Mr Key in his capacity as National Party leader…

She goes on to say :

Mr Compton has since locked his Twitter account and removed any reference to Mr Key’s office from his LinkedIn profile.

A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister said Mr Compton’s role in the National Leader’s Office involved helping the National Party and its MPs, including the leader, with their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Riddle me this: If ‘The Media’ is the problem, how has Labour, or any other left-leaning party, ever managed to win an election, ever?

In the last couple of decades, Newspapers and Newdesks appear to have transformed from journalism (with ethics), to entertainment (business oriented). Hence, the somewhat leftish "media" has become rather right.

Imagine the first half of the votes for a party all preference A,B,C but the send half all preference A,C,B. If the first half are allocated to the winning candidate, and most of the second half are excess votes that get redistributed… C comes out way ahead desipte only getting half the “next preference” votes overall. Or something like that.

That's not how it works. Excess votes are distributed based on proportions. If there are 20% excess votes to be re-distributed, then all of the second choices are counted, but each one only counts as 0.2 of a vote. So in your example, B and C would get equal votes, as is fair and proper.